Indigo

Dear Ann,
So much typing we are doing! The days before the launch of our new website fly as I sit here typing and drinking tea and talking into my brand-new Bluetooth (which frees the hands for knitting but also makes me feel like I should ask if you want fries with that.) Such is the state of our joint workload (correction: funload) that I am only very occasionally--hardly ever-- roaming the Internet in search of tasty snippets. But I've accumulated a stack of good ones. Snippets ahoy!
New York Textile Month is already half over! Get on the Textile Trek! Studio tours and such. It looks amazing.
Speaking of textiles, a technique I hadn't heard of: shifu, in which paper strips are spun into yarn, and woven on a loom into fabric. Roni Sher, one of my comrades in woad-dipping and cotton-stitching last month, sent me a link to this piece by artist Catherine Tutter. (Watch the slideshow; the paper yarn is quite beautiful. as is the idea of turning words on paper into a textile. Hidden words.)
Speaking of woad, a radio piece about turning Tennessee tobacco fields over to indigo, which is then used to dye fabric for fancy jeans.
(Don't just read the transcript; listen. Regional accents, full of character, are not gone, not yet.)
(Photo: Marketplace.org.)
(Woad and indigo, while different plants, yield the same dye pigment.)
Finally, from our cashmere goat-breeding friend who blogs over at Comptonia (which is a plant), a critical rule for living. Reading Quinn's funny, wise words, I kept looking for the metaphor. Then I realized that it's not a metaphor; it's good, practical advice.
Spread to the edge! Get fries with that!
Love,
Kay